Occassionally your NBN Internet connection may have an outage or go down for extended maintenance. In this case it is possible to use an Android or iPhone smart phone to provide Internet access to your office network, via a Windows computer.
- Enable the Hotspot feature on the smart phone
- Note the LAN IP address of the Windows computer
- Plug in the smart phone to a USB port on one of the Windows computers – it should provide Internet access to that computer. It may be necessary to download drivers for Android phones – for this reason you may need to test this feature before your outage occurs!
* If the workstation being used is a laptop it may be possible to connect to the Hotspot via wifi and connect to the LAN via ethernet (if the laptop has an ethernet port). - From Windows Control Panel -> Network and Sharing -> Change adapter settings -> right-click the Ethernet / Local Area Connection relating to the Smartphone ethernet connection -> select Properties
- Sharing -> [tick] Allow other network users to connect through this computers Internet
- Home network connection: [ select the main LAN adapter]
- A static IP address will be assigned to the LAN, such as 192.168.137.1. Now edit the properties for the LAN adapter, in the IPv4, Advanced properties re-add the IP address noted in step 2 as a second IP address – this will allow the computer to communicate again with devices on the LAN.
- On the main router add a static route to 0.0.0.0/0.0.0.0 via the LAN IP address noted from step 2.
Notes & limitations:
- This outline is just a “quick fix” for temporary Internet access to be shared – it does not turn off DHCP on the workstation which may cause other devices such as printers or computers to change IP addresses unexpectedly
- Not all routers support adding the required static route
- The added static route on the main gateway router may not take precedence if the router thinks it still has a valid IP address on the NBN connection
- Services that rely on port forwarding on the main router will not be available via the temporary connection
- Undo all the steps in reverse order after the main Internet connection has returned to working